AnotherDerbyFan

It comes down to which side of the fence you want to stand on: Without Covid, the club would have avoided admin completely If the club was better run, the club could have avoided it despite Covid. Was this potentially linked with a failed takeover/investment? Not the Fake Sheikh, but someone else? I've been scratching my head over that since the beginning.

A few months being the end of the season. The penalty decisions against us is atrocious though. 2 stonewall penalties vs Forest and another vs Preston spring to mind. The second penalty shout vs Preston looked more like a loss of balance than a foul. There have been a couple other strong shouts this season, and quite a few soft ones.. yet not a single given. You'd expect these things t even out somewhat, but we do tend to be on the wrong side of the decisions a lot more than the decisions being in our favour. The ref vs Preston was one of the worst displays I've ever seen, missing obvious fouls against both sides. A Preston player got clipped on the edge of their box as they were making a breakaway... no foul and Derby have the ball to start another attack. Earlier in the game, Knight knocked the ball past the defender, who made no attempt to play the ball but blocked Knight off from getting on the end of it and knocked him to the floor. Again no foul given, but this time Preston have the ball to start an attack of their own. Nothing new. That been chanted at every game since the original charge. 12 points this year, minus however many the appeal panel see fit (anything from 0 to 12), plus however many for P&S. I'll be very surprised if there is any deduction next season.

It's not a loophole if it's written in plain English "you can do 'this' if 'that' happens"

That's not quite right. It's not about 'financial difficulty', but whether in balance of probabilities, we entered administration solely because of Covid. There are many ways that statement can be interpreted. In the basic sense, if we had the £20m cash we missed out on as a result of Covid, would we avoid admin completely? A little example here of how much money if left in Mel's piggy bank. Let's say he had £30m at the start of 2020 (before lockdown). The plan being to slowly reduce his input so that the club will run at an organic profit. By the end of the 21/22 season, that goal was set to be achieved, and no more money ever needs to be taken from his piggy bank. However, Covid struck which ruined those plans. Sales made in the summer to get some cash in and others let go to cut the wage bill. Fans still not allowed in so further sales and cutbacks necessary in the Jan window. But still, not money left by Autumn 2021.

Yep, final year. To keep things simple, only Bielik, Bird, Knight, Sibley and Jozwiak are currently contacted beyond the end of the season as a result of embargo restrictions. I think you're being a bit harsh by calling it a disgrace. Based on the discussions we've had on the subject, you must surely concede that there is some merit to the appeal. You didn't say Wigan's appeal was a disgrace, yet their justification of the Covid impact was even weaker than ours. The season the P&S deduction occurs should be this season and no later. With what you're advocating, you may as well just implement an automatic relegation and save everyone a lot of wasted time. I'm led to believe that a club doesn't have to submit accounts after going into administration? I could be wrong on that though. P&S submissions would still be due for all relevant periods so it's not as if we can escape punishment by hiding accounts... they even saw provisional accounts before we went into administration anyway. Don't forget, the delay in submitting the accounts was because of the ongoing charge, appeal, and then subsequent discussions to produce a set of accounts both the club and EFL were happy with.

Wigan's was about a month iirc

Wigan

Maybe the way to look at it milestones. So were the club's actions at that exact point in time in line with what they're saying. If there wasn't any lockdown at all from March 2020 onwards, would we have been fine? Did our transfer activity in summer 2020 mean that we would have been fine if stadiums were opened up as expected at the time? Did our transfer activity in Jan 2021? Did our transfer activity in summer 2021? Arguments could be made for either side for most of those. However, other than reducing the wage bill in summer 2021, we'll have a big task arguing in favour of not needing to sell players when we had bids for them. I doubt any money has made its way to Cocu to date, so I wouldn't put that as a factor against the admin appeal.

Past spending is irrelevant if the club could have avoided administration completely if it wasn't for Covid. In my opinion there are two key questions: At which point do you take that snapshot? Could we have avoided administration despite Covid? Would that snapshot be the start of Covid lockdowns (March 2020), the start of the 20/21 season, or do you also factor in the belief that we wouldn't have been in lockdown for anywhere near as long (end of 19/20 we were hoping to have fans in from the start of the 20/21 season, then it was pushed back a few months...? We could have not bought players last summer such as Jozwiak and Byrne for fees plus others for free, but this could be ignored depending on when the snapshot is taken. We definitely could have sold players inn the summer window just gone (notably Buchanan and Lawrence who both had bids rejected) and I think they have to look into whether Mel could have carried on funding the club. I personally think we'll be unsuccessful purely based on those final two reasons. I am hoping to be wrong though ?

I'm amazed you read all 20k+ posts on the topic to come to that conclusion ?

Those figures were from Transfermarkt. I may have used them at the time due to laziness. We can get more accurate figures off the post balance sheet purchases which covers summer transfers. Estimates still required for 19/20 onwards winter windows. PBSP = post balance sheet purchases So I take it these calcs to figure out the total for each season: 15/16 = 22.056 + Blackman + Camara + Olsson + 0.323 (winter agent fees) 16/17 = 14.184 + Nugent + McAllister + winter agent fees (total agent fees = 1.962) 17/18 = 12.763 + Jerome + winter agent fees (total agent fees = 2.180) 18/19 = 18.541 + winter agent fees (total agent fees = 4.293) 19/20 = Bielik + agent fees (total agent fees = 2.142) 20/21 = Jozwiak + Byrne + agent fees Estimated Totals: 15/16 = 27.559 16/17 = 17.034 17/18 = 14.293 18/19 = 19 19/20 = 9 20/21 = 4.2 @Mr Popodopolous average original contract length is 3.3 years, but the players signed for big fees were all 4 or 5 years

I interpretted the situation as the EFL allowing us to go up to 25 players on the understanding Kazim and Bielik will miss a 'considerable proportion of the season' Bielik for example, picked up a similar injury at a similar time the season prior. He made his U23 return in October, made a premature return to the first team in November, before finally playing again in December. I expect the same sort of schedule again. Kazim was supposed to be about 3 months (so mid-Nov). It's not unreasonable for those types of injuries to heal a bit quicker, so mid to late October is fair.

I agree to an extent, but not in this case. If Birmingham had exceeded limits for 2 periods in a row just because they wanted to spend more, they would have had no excuse and would rightfully be punished for both periods. Our case is considerably different to that... trying to stay within the limits (even if using as many loopholes as possible) only to find out 5 years later that the actual budgets were considerably different to those used. Haven't heard anything about an appeal - very doubtful we have. We're permanent members of the list now... I think we've all accepted that ?

Double jeopardy was referring to the previous charge where we were found non-complaint to FRS102, then being penalised again for failing P&S. Personally, I see P&S as a contunuation of the original charge, even if it isn't officially viewed that way. Double jeopardy seems to have been thrown in there by someone who doesn't understand the whole picture. Profit or within the limits. I'll be surprised if it's the former. Before or after P&S resets for failed periods. On that topic, are all 3 years reset to £13m, or just years which exceed that figure?

Take a look at the first team squad and tell me what you honestly think the player wage bill currently stands at then? Signed under £12.5k embargo: Marshall, Byrne, Jozwiak, Kazim Signed under £4.5k embargo: Allsop, Davies, Jagielka, Steraman, Morrison, Baldock Recent academy graduates: Ebosele, McDonald, JBrown, Watson, Hutchinson, Stretton Longer term academy graduates (in 2nd or 3rd season): Buchanan, Bird, Knight, Sibley Other: Roos, Forsyth, Bielik, Shinnie, Lawrence You refer to the 17/18 wage bill, yet ignore who we've offloaded since. Vydra, Weimann, Shackell, Jerome, Bent, Baird, Ledley, Nugent, Butterfield, Blackman, Pearce, Johnson, Bryson, Bennett, Keogh, Olsson, Thorne, Martin, Anya, Huddlestone, Wisdom, Carson. you could probably count on one hand how few were on less than £20k pw.

Completely independent. Club adverts no different to any other google advert - targetted towards the user. David stopped them as soon as admin was announced. The club at various times has invited people to supporter meetings. The recent few have had representatives from a range of 'supporter groups', such as Punjabi Rams, The Rams Trust, and of course DCFCfans. Earlier meetings during Mel's spell as owner invited a group of fans (only from the forum) as it is the largest supporter group, of which many other members of other supporter groups have accounts on it. Rooney's comment was essentially saying we'd start preparing for next season, given 21 points pretty much means relegation. It would still be a reasonably strong team for us with all having already played first team games and all being classed as professional standing (with the exception of Williams who is a scholar).

It'll be entirely Derby, with increased sponsorship. Hopefully only a few months until we finally see some accounts to give us a clue on how much extra 32Red are giving us

RamsTV income could potetnially fall under match ticket income, but the much more likely option is for it to be grouped with TV income. Sponsorship is separate from commercial. I gave a very vague comment, which could relate to 'new Derby method' or a 'standard method'.

Like I said, not selling those players will be a contributing factor as to why it'd very unlikely we'll had the admin points deduction removed. Would selling the players we received offers for have been enough to get us through to a point of being self-sufficient? We'd have needed to raise £20m from sales for it to outweigh the Covid impact. PS. I'm sure you can think of better insults than that. 0/10 for creativity, 1/10 for effort.

Possibly, it depends how it was spread out. Method 1: £5m underspend, £5m underspend, £5m underspend = compliant in 3 periods Method 2: £5m overspend, £10m underspend, £10m underspend = compliant in 2 periods In all honesty, you probably would have seen us hit with much bigger points deductions if you had let us stick to 'The Derby Method'.

That falls under "TV, broadcasting revenue and football league income" That falls under "sponsorship" If we had published accounts when we were required, they would have likely shown we were still within the limits due to the amortisation policy.

We were given 5 options for 19/20: Pro-rata refund (I think it took until the start of this season for the remaining people to get it) 20% discount on 20/21 ST 10% discount on 20/21 ST with free RamsTV subscription for the remainder of the season 4 match ticket vouchers for 20/21 No refund For 20/21: The above options to be carried over to 21/22 Option to get full refund on 20/21 ST, but had to request it before a certain match day Pro-rata refund if keep 20/21 ST Probably some other options, but can't remember off the top of my head

That's a good point. You could also add why we rejected multi-million pound offers for the likes of Lawrence and Buchanan just days before Mel started discussing administration. A counter-counter-argument could be that no-one knew how long fans wouldn't be allowed in the stadium. Too many complexities in it for me to think there's a realistic chance of getting the deduction overturned.

It doesn't matter if Covid affected other clubs or not and by how much. All that would matter is if without Covid the club wouldn't have entered administration. ? See my above comment.

That's P&S, not related to administration or cash flow It's you who doesn't get it. A club's revenue isn't volitile... it's not going to go from £30m to £10m, then up to £40m in successive seasons in the Championship. In 17/18 revenue was just under £30m. Roughly £15m of that was from match receipts and commercial/hospitality activities (which would have been £0 (or certainly very close to) in 20/21. In 17/18, we reached the Play-off semis and early rounds of the cups (Man Utd away in FA Cup). 18/19, it was the Playoff Final and cup games away to Man utd, Chelsea, Southampton and Brighton (I think all 4 of those were on TV?). Match receipts would have been down in 19/20 (no Playoffs or cup run), but sponsorship thanks to Rooney would have offset that slightly. 20/21 would have been similar to 19/20, but for a full year of Rooney sponsorship. For simplicity, it's reasonable to just assume £30m revenue for all seasons, minus the Covid impact on match receipts and commercial/hospitality activities... c50% of revenue. It's not about what we spent prior to Covid. It's about whether the numbers stack up to say we would not have been in administration if it wasn't for Covid - in our case, was the business going to be self-sustainable from the 22/23 season onwards. I'm not looking for sympathy at all. I'm simply putting forward a potential viewpoint that some on here instantly choose to dismiss without actually looking at it in detail.